The Way The Cookie Crumbles
By Michael Floyd
Since the Internet was embraced by the commercial world some three years ago, public-domain programs have given way to "beta" software, anonymous access is being augmented with packet sniffers and cookies, and the community that once developed collaborative projects such as FreeBSD and the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) standard seems all but lost in the relentless pounding of Web... Web... Web...
The reason the drums beat so loudly is that the Web may represent the greatest opportunity in the history of marketing. For the first time, the bidirectional nature of a mass medium allows marketers to gather demographic data directly from the "viewers." The most popular method is through cookies.
As Lincoln Stein describes in this issue, cookies allow you to preserve state between sessions, and in the process create and maintain an anonymous identity for you. Cookies are often used to present a version of a site customized to your preferences. Now, I don't mind handing over my operating system and browser information so that Web sites can offer a richer experience based on my configuration. Nor do I mind someone tracking my click trail so they can offer customized pages based on my browsing habits. But I would prefer to do it knowingly and willingly. Setting aside the obvious security and abuse issues, I find it disquieting that marketers can "quietly" lift details of my patterns and behaviors so that they can be used to sell me something.
Even more alarming than a server offering you a batch of cookies is online journalism's embracement of advertising.
